Friday Links | November 2, 2012

Last week Muslims around the world celebrated Eid ul Adha, or Feast of Sacrifice, which is as well the end of the pilgrimage. Especially for this celebration, The National featured the story of Lady Evelyn Cobbolds, who might have been the first British woman to have gone on hajj. Some women in Saudi Arabia have been doing the ritual slaughtering themselves, which is generally done by men. And despite an anti-harassment campaign, for many young boys in Egypt, harassment is their Eid activity, according to activists.

Detained Hazara women stand by an Indonesian policeman. Around 120 ethnic Hazaras were detained by Indonesian police, when they tried to reach Australia by wooden boat. Hazaras are a predominantly Shi’ite minority from Pakistan, where they face extreme harassment and death threats. Image by REUTERS/Beawiharta

A Bangladeshi charity trains women to become drivers in a country where there are, at the moment, less than 300 registered professional female drivers against approx. 2.4 million male drivers.

A traditional form of swap marriage in Yemen, shehgar, where two men marry each other’s sisters, is still very popular in Yemen, mainly because there is no dowry involved. The main problem, though, is that if one of the two couples divorces, the other couple has to divorce as well, even though their union might be a happy one.

According to Faith Matters, last year 5,200 Britons became Muslim and approx. 75% of these new Muslims are women. Both Heather Matthews and Amy Sall are, how original, labeled as former party girls, who chose to become Muslim.